The Virginia Supreme Court and the Judicial Council are considering a new rule to deal with limited-scope representation, especially assistance to people who are already in litigation. My comments on it are below. The proposal, and where you can send... Continue reading

Alabama's Senate has once again passed this bill, now numbered SB 13. It does not separate marriage from government, but couples will now simply register their marriages with the courts, instead of asking the courts to license them and having... Continue reading

"Family Law Is Not 'Civil': The Faulty Foundation of The Domestic Relations Exception To Federal Jurisdiction” By Joseph A. Carrol, Dickinson School of Law ABA First Place Schwab Essay Contest Winner, 2017 Continue reading

The Hague Convention doesn't exactly have a statute of limitations, but it says that if a case is filed more than one year after the abduction or retention, the judge can consider whether the child is "settled in the new... Continue reading

"Family Law Is Not 'Civil': The Faulty Foundation of The Domestic Relations Exception To Federal Jurisdiction” By Joseph A. Carrol, Dickinson School of Law ABA First Place Schwab Essay Contest Winner, 2017 ABA Family Law Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1 Continue reading

You may have read about Christopher, a Dallas-area 8-year-old who has been, without exaggeration, sadistically tortured his whole life, completely robbed of a normal life, in an extreme case of "Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy." A dashing and lighthearted name for... Continue reading

You may have read about Christopher, a Dallas-area 8-year-old who has been, without exaggeration, sadistically tortured his whole life, completely robbed of a normal life, in an extreme case of "Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy." Christopher’s mother treated him as if he was deathly ill from his birth until she was... Continue reading

The House-passed GOP tax bill shifts the tax burden on alimony from alimony payors to recipients. I.e., about 97% of the time, from divorced women to divorced men, who we all assume are in higher tax brackets than their exes.... Continue reading

Legions of critics endlessly cite the logical flaws and dangers of "Identity Politics" on the left and even on the right, but as Mary Eberstadt points out, they overlook that emotionally, it's deeply authentic and heartfelt. Indeed, it has become... Continue reading

"Ignore the clickbait headline and actually read this," my friend Bonnie Algera writes. How right she is. If You Don’t Want To Regret Your Life 30 Years Later, Make This One Choice Right Now By Michael Simmons on medium.com Continue reading

"About 70 percent of marriages that began in the 1990s reached their 15th anniversary, up from about 65 percent of those that began in the 1970s and 1980s.Those who married in the 2000s are so far divorcing at even lower... Continue reading

From Passing the Bar: Poems to Learn the Law By, by John Crouch Negligence — The Offhand Formula McCarty v. Pheasant Run, Inc. 826 F.2d 1554 (U.S. 7th Circuit 1987) Held, by the Foremost Jurist of his Time, and an... Continue reading

When Justice Isn’t So Blind A study of federal judges finds that they don’t just rely on facts and legal precedents when making decisions By Robert M. Sapolsky in the Wall Street Journal Continue reading

This isn't your typical "History of English" article. It's by John McWhorter, who has a great audio course on linguistics. English is not normal: No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language Continue reading

Here's my reply to Chris Brecheen's '10 Words Writers Need to Learn to Use "Correctly"': The problem with most of these is not that they're Pedantically Incorrect: It's that when used incorrectly, they're twee, faux-highbrow words that most people don't really understand, in situations where normal straightforward words would work... Continue reading

American civil and family courts have dealt with foreign law routinely and undramatically for centuries, including Sharia. People have always had lawsuits about actions and situations that happen in other countries or across several borders, and so the law has... Continue reading